Last night I caught the last half hour of the god-awful movie “Showgirls” airing on VH1. I had never seen it before (lucky me), and while flipping during commercials I came upon a scene so laughable as to not be believed. The dancers were on stage dancing, and someone had digitized in tube tops over the dancers’ boobs. Apparently in the original they were topless, so the censors actually drew in flesh-colored bikini tops for the women. I laughed out loud. I honestly did. Then one scene later that chick Elizabeth Berkeley is doing an interview and they’ve now digitized the top again – and this time it’s even more ridiculous because it’s close-up. Again I laughed out loud.
Then it reminded me of an incident many many years ago when I was watching “Dirty Dancing” on tv. It was on some cable station that aired “cleaned up” versions of movies – but not like regular tv of old where they literally cut out EVERYTHING. But anyway, I’m watching the movie and all of a sudden one of the characters says, “I’m gonna knock you on your act!” HUH? At first I wasn’t sure I heard it right, and then I realized that they had censored the word “ass” and put in “act”, thus effectively ruining the fervor of the threat.
Censorship – you gotta love it. C’mon – it’s good for laughs sometimes and you know it.